NCAA Announces Men?s Swimming & Diving Selections

DURHAM, N.C. – Duke will send a relay to the NCAA Men's Division I Swimming and Diving Championship for the first time in over 25 years two weeks from now in Iowa City, Iowa. Sophomore Peter Kropp was also officially invited to compete in the national meet as an individual, as announced by the NCAA Wednesday.

Kropp was invited to compete in the 100-yard breaststroke after surpassing the NCAA automatic qualification standard during the fall with a 52.02 swim at the Janis Hape Dowd Nike Cup Invitational. That clocking broke the previous ACC, Duke and Koury Natatorium records, and seeds Kropp seventh out of 30 invited swimmers on the event psych sheet. A native of Los Angeles, Calif., Kropp will be making his first career appearance at the NCAA meet, and is also eligible to compete in the 200 breaststroke and the 200 IM after earning provisional cuts in those events during the regular season.

Kropp will be joined in Iowa City by 200 medley relay teammates Kaz Takabayashi, David Armstrong and James Peek. The group garnered the program's first NCAA 'A' cut since the new relay standards were implemented. Their school record-breaking mark of 1:25.03 at last month's ACC Championship in Atlanta was good for a podium finish in second. The Blue Devils' entry time seeds them 12th heading into the NCAA meet.

The 2015 Men's Division I Swimming and Diving Championship is slated for March 26-28 at the University of Iowa's Campus Recreation & Wellness Center. Preliminaries will begin at 12 p.m. ET each day followed by finals at 8 p.m. For more information about the meet, visit http://www.ncaa.com/sports/swimming-men/d1.

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